A Little More Than Kin
by Trivial Pursuit
Summary: How far the mighty have fallen.
1. A Fellow of Infinite Jest

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?

-_Hamlet_, V.I

* * *

She winds up in Charming after she flees Lakeside, Wisconsin, a town too tiny to be found on most maps that was filled gave prickled the hairs on Erin's neck, and before that Algoe, NY, which was weirdly desolate, and before that Chester's Mill, Maine, which was insular and afraid. Erin and Rosie only stay a week or two in each place, though Erin is plagued by possible threats; in Lakeside it's a guy who looks a little too much like hired muscle that arrives a little too conveniently; in Algoe it's a customer who always looks nervous when Erin comes near; in Chester's Mill it's a break-in at their apartment. There are many places before and between, larger and smaller, picked randomly by Rosie with a giant road map of America and a thumb tack.

She wakes up sometimes with the stench of human filth and fear settling into her nostrils, and she finds herself aching to call Dimitri or Harry or even Calum, but she can't, because while she's curled up in some low-rent shithole, they're out saving the world and her careful budgeting cannot take the strain of a phone call home (She knows Cal would make some quip about how far the mighty have fallen and that would break her). So she sits and shakes and sweats and remembers.

She puts Rosie in school at the first couple of places with hopes for roots and new beginnings, but now, with a new town every few months it mostly just serves as a government-mandated daycare until the next town comes along.

The diner isn't the worst she's ever worked, and it puts food in Rosie's stomach and a roof over her head. The owner is a middle-aged woman who insists on being called Auntie Lulu and who thinks Erin is a nice girl named Eleanor from somewhere in England who got into a bit of trouble. Erin only ever gives minimal details, Lulu fills in the rest of the story with her own imagination; turning Eleanor into a cobbled mosaic of Lifetime specials and Charming's _traviata_. Eleanor is a good worker who has a young daughter named Rosalind, keeps her head down, doesn't go to church, keeps to herself, and is willing to pick up more extra shifts then most mothers can.

The local motorcycle gang rides past the diner often, the rumbling of their motorbikes roaring angrily, making cups rattle in their saucers, like a small earthquake passing by. They don't come into the diner often, which makes limiting her exposure easier; after her own extensive googling, town gossip, and a favour called in to Dimitri with no questions asked, Erin had decided their connections with the government and organized crime made them too much of a risk to her and Rosie's safety.

There's two of them sitting on opposite sides of the booth, one with feathery hair, shoulders that scream _Marine_, and hands scarred with a spiderweb of tales. The other has his back to her initially, and in the curve of his back she sees a hunted man. When he turns she almost gasps; the man who recruited her had scars like that, and he told her how her got them; his 'Glasgow smile' Thomas had called it, and laughed.

'What would you like?' Erin can feel her fingers tighten around her pen and her nails biting into her palm. She can see Lulu flitting around in her periphery, carefully watching Erin, and she thinks perhaps Lulu is more observant then Erin gave her credit for.

'How'd you end up here?' the one facing the door asks, surprising her with an accent that is somewhere between Glaswegian and Belfast, but really, how does anyone end up here, in this small, dead-end town that is so full of possibility. The 'New World' they called themselves, and Erin could use a new world, so that's where she went. America, the place people go to disappear.

'The same way you did I imagine.' There is Section D and Harry and the Gavrick Affair and Ruth and China and everything going _wrong_. (She thinks it's funny, the first time they met Harry told her he was the sinking ship and she the rising star, yet here she is, in backwater America with a government pension that never quite covers all her bills and 'not fit for service' stamped across her record while Harry trots the boards at Whitehall making friends and influencing people.)

'I doubt that very much.' He smiles crookedly, the scars pulling his face face into a mirthless grin.

'You never know. Would you like some more coffee?' She adds this because no matter how much she wants to ask, she's not a spook anymore and waitresses don't ask those kind of questions.

He gets a refill and she gets a fifteen dollar tip tucked under his coffee cup.


	2. The Face We Make

**Author's Note: None of the dialogue has been argot-picked, please feel free.**

* * *

"God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another."

-_Hamlet_, III.I

* * *

Her car is ancient, probably at least as old as Erin herself, a tired old American tank that simply refuses to die with a trunk large enough to transport several fully grown adults, non-existent suspension, the worst handling Erin's ever experienced, and the aqua paint and chrome trim sprinkled with rust around the wheel wells. While Erin has never been particularly mechanically inclined, she is able and willing to fix her cars herself, partly out of necessity, since her budget cannot handle the trips to the mechanic 'Mrs Meagles', as the car had been dubbed, desperately needed.

It was therefore unsurprising when Mrs Meagles began billowing smoke from under her bonnet and came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the street as Erin was driving to work.

'No no no! Don't do this to me Mrs Meagles! Please! If you start up I promise I'll buy you premium petrol for a week! Please!' Erin screamed and banged the steering wheel with her fists in frustration. After trying the engine a few more times and getting only a truly impressive cloud of black smoke Erin climbed out of the car and began to push.

Erin pushed the car seven blocks and into the lot of the garage, attracting quite an audience of the bikers that seemed to perpetually be in and out of the garage's parking lot who called out jibes and applauding as she shoved the car the last few metres before sliding down onto the pavement.

'Ma'am?' A blond man was looking down at her worriedly, 'Are you alright?' At this Erin began to laugh at the thought of how ridiculous she must look.

'I shall be quite fine in a few minutes, I'm just a little tired.' Erin shoved a piece of limp, sweaty hair off her forehead (she'd had to dye her hair a pale, lifeless brown that she'd attempted to match to her daughter's out of a chemist's meagre selection, daubing dye into her eyebrows in the flickering light of the motel they'd been staying in) before pulling herself off the pavement with the aid of Mrs Meagles' back bumper. 'Mrs Meagles, however, is feeling quite unwell and I'm afraid I won't be able to fix her this time.' At the man's quizzical look she added 'Mrs Meagles is my car.'

'Right.' Though he looked even more disconcerted then before. 'Do you have any idea what's wrong with, er, _her_?'

'Absolutely everything.'

'Oh.'

'She's an absolute beast, though she'll probably last me until the apocalypse and then for a few days after that.' Erin laughed ironically, 'I'll be able to put her in my will, bequest her to the person I loath the most in the world.'

'Let's have a look then. I'm Jax Teller by the way.'

'Eleanor Poitier, pleased to meet you Mr Teller.' The false name rolls easily off her tongue as they make their way around to the front of the car.

'Jax is fine.' When Jax lifted the hood a surprise cloud of smoke blinded them for a minute, leaving them coughing and waving their hands in an attempt to clear the smoke. After a few minutes, Jax began to tentatively prod her car's inner workings, making several sounds that were either amazement or horror.

'Hey, Tig, you gotta see this!' Jax hailed over one of the other mechanics, whom Erin recognized from the diner. They both began to mutter, occasionally cursing whenever flesh came into contact with metal that had not yet fully cooled. After a while the other man who had been called Tig stuck his head out from under the car's bonnet.

'You're car's being held together with _duct tape_.' His tone was one of disbelief as he held up a piece of blackened duct tape on one finger.

'A girl's got to make do with what she has.' She set her jaw defiantly, waiting for someone to mock her handy work. Both men look at her with something that seems to resemble alarm in their eyes and several other mechanics gravitate towards Mrs Meagles' engine, all muttering. Occasionally an ill-placed poke issued forth another plume of acrid smoke, leaving them all coughing and cursing into their arms.

'That's quite the car you got there.' The man with the scars sidled up beside her as she waited for a pronouncement on Mrs Meagles and her bank account's fate.

'Mrs Meagles is a very special lady.' The corner of his mouth seemed to quirk up at the name.

'Fuck.' Erin groaned after glancing at her watch. 'I was supposed to be at work an hour ago. How am I supposed to pay Mrs Meagles' no doubt exorbitant bills when she's actively preventing me from going to work and making money?'

'Need a lift?' He gestures to a wrecker that looked about as old as Mrs Meagles.

'I don't think I could afford your rates.' She laughs, before walking over to Jax with a couple of bills in her hand. 'Look, here's three hundred dollars, fix what you can to to get her back on the road and just leave the rest.' She turns around and takes off running down the street towards Lulu's, her hair flapping in the wind behind her.


	3. We Happy Few

**Author's Note: This takes place post series 10 for _Spooks_ at at an as-yet undetermined place for _Sons of Anarchy _(Tara will still be alive though, because I love Tara). I have this very weird headcanon for Rosie that she occasionally communicates through quotes, so watch out for that (In general thought my Rosie is going to be sort of bizarrely intelligent for her age but also sort of messed up).**

**_Kakashka_ means, according to the occasionally dubious Google Translate, 'piece of shit' in Russian. In my _Spooks_ ****headcanon Erin speaks Russian, Chinese, and Arabic, some of which Rosie has picked up.**

* * *

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;  
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me  
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,  
This day shall gentle his condition:  
And gentlemen in England now a-bed  
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,  
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks  
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

-_Henry V_,

* * *

He sees her in the grocer's, and it takes him a minute to recognize her, she looks so bizarrely out of place pushing a shopping trolly and searching through piles of apples. She looks calm, which was odd considering he'd never thought she looked particularly anxious, yet, as she inspects a shiny Ambrosia apple for imperfections, she looks perfectly content.

A small girl came into view as she rounded around a display of salad dressings and began tugging at Eleanor's pant leg, talking animatedly about something she'd learned at school. He remembers when Kerrianne was that age; she'd always be a solemn child, even before he left, but Chibs remembers her telling everyone the day she read a book entirely by herself.

Eleanor and the girl move out of produce, moving through the aisle, methodically collecting items, looking at each price and adding up all the bill in her head. Chibs remembers seeing his mother do the same thing, moving through Murphy's, calculating how much Seamus would need for the pub, how much they'd need for bail and doctor's bills and the furniture that would undoubtedly be broken. Eleanor doesn't venture into the aisles of crisps and processed foods, though she spends an odd amount of time obsessively searching through the condiments section while the girl giggles gleefully.

'No more, no more,' she chants, even as Eleanor sighs and turns, spotting Chibs almost instantly.

As this happens Chibs thinks precisely two things; 'Christ, how the fuck did a girl like her end up in this shithole?' and 'Fuck. She saw me.'

'Hello Mr- I'm sorry I don't think I ever got your name.' Despite the pleasance of her tone, her eyes are wary, spooked.

'I was just picking up a few things and thought I'd come over and say hello.' It sounds like a weak excuse, even to his own ears, though it is true enough.

The little girl tugs at the skirt of the butter yellow dress, her uniform from Lulu's, Chibs realises, she must have just gotten off work.

'This is my daughter, Rosie. Rosie, this is one of the men who are fixing Mrs Meagles, Mr …?'

'Telford,' he supplies, 'Filip Telford.'

'Thank you for fixing Mrs Meagles, Mr Telford. We've had her since Baltimore and she's my absolute favourite. Mummy says she's just _kakashka_, but Mummy's wrong.' Rosie tugs on his hand and whispers this last bit in Chibs' ear.

'Rosie! I told you not to repeat that! It's not polite.' Eleanor tugs and pats Rosie's hair, as if attempting to smooth out her daughter's language.

'But Piper says way worse then me and his mummy lets him!' Chibs smiles, remembering Kerrianne and Abel at that age.

'Oh lassie, I am pretty good friends with Piper's ma and I can assure you she would tan his hide if she heard him talking like that.' Rosie smiles and Chibs can already see her picking poor Piper Dvorak-Winston into tiny pieces.

'Piper's silly, he says that guns make pew-pew noises. I told him that he was being thick but he didn't believe me. He said that girls didn't know that stuff.' Eleanor immediately tenses up, putting her hands on her daughter's shoulders and speaking in a tone that didn't quite match the panic in her eyes.

'I don't think Mr Telford is interested in your eternal war with Piper, Rosie.'

'But Mr Telford knows Piper's mum, so he can do reconnaissance for me. I need to know his weak points.' Eleanor looked even more uncomfortable, though she was smiling slightly at her daughter. It was a good look for her, Chibs thought.

'I will see what I can do Major General Rosie.'

'Thank you Brigadier Telford.' turning to Eleanor he said: 'I'd better get going and leave you two to your shop. Major General, General', Chibs gave a salute that had become somewhat less crisp then his days in the Army. As gel left he hear Rosie say:

'I like Mr Telford, he doesn't have nice clothes like Dimitri, but he's nice and he has groovy hair.'

Which was probably why, upon his return to the clubhouse, Chibs finds himself seeking out Opie to ask about Piper and do 'reconnaissance'.


	4. The Sparrow's Fall

**Author's Note: Short, but more will be coming in the near future.**

* * *

There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

-_Hamlet_,

* * *

Mrs Meagles takes three weeks to complete to any of the mechanics' satisfaction, though by that time they had well exceeded the three hundred dollars Eleanor had given them they had all agreed that the duct tape alone was so pathetic as to warrant a pro bono, scrounging and adapting parts from other cars that came in. Mrs Meagles, though everyone considered the name ridiculous it somehow stuck, became a sort of project car; mechanics would spend a few hours after work drinking and tinkering around with her insides. She probably wouldn't have passed any sort of automotive safety standards test, but she started nine times out of ten and no longer emitted smoke, something which they were very proud of.

When the time came that Clay would no longer allow Mrs Meagles to take up space in his lot, Chibs called Lulu's (for it turned out that Eleanor didn't own a phone; another oddity Chibs made a mental note of) for Eleanor to come pick her up.

When she does arrive Chibs is working on a '56 DS, and as soon as she takes one look at Mrs Meagles she _knows_.

'How much extra do I owe you?' She starts to reach into her bag.

'You've paid us already, it's fine.' Jax closes his hand over her wallet, keeping her from reaching inside.

'You've clearly done more then three hundred dollars' worth of work. I intend to pay you for that work.' She shook Jax's hand off and began to circle the car, poking and rattling parts of the car, creating a mental tally of what had been fixed. 'I'd guess about $1600, how far off am I?'

After some vaguely terrifying stares from Eleanor, Jax admitted that she was about right, given the shortcuts they'd used in places. 'But we did it all free of charge, knowing that you'd already payed us as much as you were able to pay.'

'While I appreciate your kindness in the face of my circumstances, I am loathed to be in anyone's debt. It keeps my ledger all nice and tidy.' Her smile is all sharp teeth and curling lips and Chibs remembers his mother smiling like that and even his father being afraid.

'Here's the deal, I can't pay you in full right now, but I can get you three hundred and thirty-six a month over a five month period, which is how much I owe you plus five per cent. interest. Does that sound acceptable?'

Jax nodded, somewhat dumbfounded.

'Here's three hundred and seventy, so that's this month and next covered. I'll get you the next instalment when I can. Do you want to keep the car as collateral or can I have it now?' Jax gestured towards the car and she slid behind the wheel.

'Have a nice day.' She waved, pulling the car out of the lot cautiously.


	5. The Rough-Hewn Shape

**Author's Note: Another shortie.**

* * *

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,  
Rough-hew them how we will.

-_Hamlet_,

* * *

Chibs finds himself going to the diner more, becoming someone with a booth and a regular order, someone who knows the waitresses' names and whose got which shifts.

Eleanor works pretty much anytime between 9 am to 6 pm and 9pm to 6 am. She reserves three hours on both ends of the day to spend with her daughter, to sleep and clean and do whatever needs to be done. Sometimes, after Rosie's finished school, the little girl will sit in a corner of the diner, drinking chocolate milkshakes and reading of working on her homework; sometimes Rosie moves over to where Chibs is sitting and asks him about Ireland and Glasgow and the club and his life and he'll tell her stories that don't end in blood and tears. In turn she talks about all the places they've been, about getting off the plane at JFK and seeing a whole new type of city, about her mother fighting off two muggers at the door of the tiny flat they lived in for the month they lived in Baltimore, about some tiny town in Maine where the diner cook was named Barbie and made the best grilled cheese. Sometimes, Chibs is regaled with stories of the times Eleanor took Rosie to the theatre, most often to Shakespearian tragedies, _Macbeth_, _Hamlet_, _Coriolanus_, _Titus_ _Andronicus_, but sometimes to more modern productions like _Waiting for Godot_, _The Importance of Being Earnest_, _Pygmalion_ or operas like _Carmen_, _The Magic Flute_, _La Traviata_, and the _Pirates of Penzance_; Rosie would describe the productions in sweeping detail, eyes glowing with descriptions of blocking and orchestration. Sometimes Eleanor would shoot Rosie a warning glance and Rosie would talk about the Underground or the rain or her grandmother' scones.

Sometimes Tig, Jax, or Juice join him, and on those days Rosie smiles and waves but doesn't come over. A couple of times Rosie's already sitting with him when one of the boys comes in. The first time he and Rosie are debating the perfect way to make shortbread, though neither of them really know what they're talking about except from a consumer's standpoint when Tig walks in and plops down next to Chibs.

'So this is where you've been hiding out.' Chibs can see Rosie furtively collecting her things, zipping up her pencil case and shutting her math book, not leaving but readying herself to leave.

'I haven't been hiding out, I've been feeding myself something that doesn't have a proof. Lass, this rude bastard is Tig. Don't tell your ma I said that, by the way.' Tig choked back a laugh but it was quickly smothered when Rosie stuck her hand out across the table, which Tig took somewhat delicately, as if he was afraid it would break. 'Tig, this is Rosie, Mrs Meagles' owner.'

'Really I don't own Mrs Meagles, she's Mummy's.' Rosie pointed Eleanor out across the diner.

'Your mom's Duct Tape Woman?' Despite knowing her name, most people at Teller-Morrow still referred to Eleanor in terms of her ingenious patch-up job on Mrs Meagles.

'Mummy's name is Eleanor.' Rosie pronounced the name carefully, as if unsure.

'You the reason Chibsy here was asking 'bout Piper a few weeks ago?' Tig cocked an eyebrow.

'That, Mr Tig, was a legitimate reconnaissance mission, which was an unmitigated success on the part of the Brigadier, though clearly not nearly covert enough,' she shot a disapproving glance Chibs' way, 'And allowed us to complete several mission objectives.'

'Who taught you to speak like that? The TV?' Tig smirked, though he looked vaguely disconcerted.

'Mostly Dimitri, but Mummy too. Sometimes she reads me Le Carré, which has lots of good words.' Rosie steepled her fingers on the table, and Chibs was struck by how old a gesture for a girl no more then seven.


	6. Forty Thousand Brothers

**Author's Note: In the _SoA_ storyline this chapter takes place between 'Burnt and Purged Away' and 'To Be, Act 1'.**

* * *

I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.

-_Hamlet_, V.I

* * *

The first time she kisses him they are sitting on the roof of her flat, a bottle of whiskey, rubbing alcohol, and gauze between them, which, oddly, was for Eleanor not Chibs. He'd stopped by earlier to drop off Rosie after he'd picked the girl up from school at Eleanor's request and found her prodding at her face with a cotton pad and some rubbing alcohol. He could tell from the way she moved she had at least three cracked ribs, and she held her wrist at a funny angle, as if it refused to sit any other way. Blood spattered the white porcelain of sink in drips

'Who did this?' He felt rage bubbling up inside of him.

'Don't worry, it's been dealt with.' She laughed, hissing slightly and wrapping an arm around her ribcage. Chibs grabbed the pad and rubbing alcohol from her hands, which surrendered without protest. 'Leave this to the professionals, lass.'

'Let's go up to the roof though. I hate Rosie seeing me like this.' After a word mumbled to Rosie, she grabbed Chibs' hand, leading him up to the roof.

'What the hell happened to you lass?'

'It was my own fault. I was stupid.' She grimaced as he wiped a cut across her cheekbone with the rubbing alcohol. 'I hate that stuff, even after all these years it still makes me wince. Calum used to take the piss out of me, but the first time he got hurt he cried like a baby. Calum was a good man, a right bastard, but a good man.'

Chibs grunted noncommittally, smoothing a couple of butterflies across a cut above her eyebrow.

'How do you feel about whiskey?' He asks, and she remembers the last time someone asked her that and laughs wildly, wincing slightly.

'I have excellent feelings about whiskey, we are the very best of friends.' Chibs put down the pad and reached towards his bag, pulling out a bottle.

'For later though, wouldn't want me bleed out on the roof. What a horribly undignified way to go, to survive the fight but die because I was too much of an idiot to properly take care of myself after.' Eleanor held out her wrist and hissed as Chibs gently manipulated her hand into position.

'While it's deeply out of character for me to say this, you should probably have that wrist and the ribs looked at by a real doctor or else it'll probably end up healing wrong.' She winced as Chibs wrapped a tenser bandage around her wrist, forming a makeshift splint.

'Duly noted, thanks.' She smiled thinly as Chibs passed her the bottle of whiskey. 'Sláinte.'

'Sláinte,' he echoed when she passed the bottle back. She leaned forward suddenly, pressing her lips to his. The bandages that he had just smoothed across her cuts scratch his cheeks and the smell of isopropyl tickles his nose. He leaned forward, attempting to be mindful of her injuries.

'Christ, Eleanor,' Chibs groaned.

'Erin,' she whispered, 'My name's Erin.'

'What?' He pulled back, staring at her.

'I got into some… problems a few months back, went a little mad, ended up unemployed. I got really paranoid about some people that I didn't want popping back up in Rosie's life and _voil__á_, Eleanor Poitier was born.' She curled back into a position, seemingly innocent but ready to spring at any moment.

'Why are you telling me this? Why now?' He sounds like she's kicked his puppy, which is ridiculous and Chibs sort of hates himself for it.

'I don't know,' She sounds lost, like a small child, confused and alone and that terrifies him because Eleanor, no, _Erin_ has always been strong and so full of surety and rage, 'I guess it felt right.'

'So what happened here?' He gestured to her face, leaning back and taking another swig of whiskey.

'I have a friend in Los Angeles with connections, when I'm having a little trouble with making ends meet he'll get me a little work on the side.' It must have been the expression on his face that made her add; 'It's not prostitution, if that's what you're wondering, and I don't do it often, but money doesn't grow on trees.'

'I- ' Chibs was cut off by the sharp trill of his mobile, 'Shite, gimme a second.' Chibs flicked his mobile open and leveraged himself up, walking to the other side of the roof and turning away from Erin.

'_It's Jax, Clay's been shot._'

'Shit. Do we know who?'

'_Black, other then that we're not sure._'

'Is he at St Thomas'?'

'_Yeah._'

'Right, I'll be there soon.' Chibs rings off and turns to Erin, 'I have to go, but we will be talking about this later.'


End file.
